Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

She spoke in a dry, rather sharp voice, unlike that in which she had
hitherto addressed the new-comer. Lucy Foster looked at her with a
shrinking perplexity.

'It's best if we're all straightforward, isn't it?'--she said in a low
voice, and then, drawing towards her an illustrated magazine that lay on
the table near her she hurriedly buried herself in its pages.

* * * * *

Silence had fallen on the three ladies. Eleanor Burgoyne sat lost in
reverie, her fair head thrown back against her low chair.

She was thinking of her conversation with Edward Manisty on the
balcony--and of his book. That book indeed had for her a deep personal
significance. To think of it at all, was to be carried to the past, to feel
for the hundredth time the thrill of change and new birth.

When she joined them in Rome, in mid-winter, she had found Manisty
struggling with the first drafts of it,--full of yeasty ideas, full also of
doubts, confusions and discouragements. He had not been at all glad to see
his half-forgotten cousin--quite the contrary. As she had reminded him, she
had suffered much the same things at his hands that Miss Foster was likely
to suffer now. It made her laugh to think of his languid reception of her,
the moods, the silences, the weeks of just civil acquaintanceship; and then
gradually, the snatches of talk--and those great black brows of his lifted
in a surprise which a tardy politeness would try to mask:--and at last,
the good, long, brain-filling, heart-filling talks, the break-down of
reserves--the man's whole mind, its remorses, ambitions, misgivings, poured
at her feet--ending in the growth of that sweet daily habit of common
work--side by side, head close to head--hand close to hand.--

Eleanor Burgoyne lay still and motionless in the soft dusk of the old room,
her white lids shut--Lucy Foster thought her asleep.--

He had said to her once, quoting some Frenchman, that she was 'good to
consult about ideas.' Ah well!--at a great price had she won that praise.
And with an unconscious stiffening of the frail hands lying on the arms
of the chair, she thought of those bygone hours in which she had asked
herself--'what remains?' Religious faith?--No!--Life was too horrible!
Could such things have happened to her in a world ruled by a God?--that was
her question, day and night for years. But books, facts, ideas--all the
riddle of this various nature--_that_ one might still amuse oneself with a
little, till one's own light went out in the same darkness that had already
engulfed mother--husband--child.

So that 'cleverness,' of which father and husband had taken so little
account, which had been of so little profit to her so far in her course
through circumstance, had come to her aid. The names and lists of the
books that had passed through her hands, during those silent years of her
widowhood, lived beside her stern old father, would astonish even Manisty
were she to try and give some account of them. And first she had read
merely to fill the hours, to dull memory. But gradually there had sprung up
in her that inner sweetness, that gentle restoring flame that comes from
the life of ideas, the life of knowledge, even as a poor untrained woman
may approach it. She had shared it with no one, revealed it to no one. Her
nature dreaded rebuffs; and her father had no words sharp enough for any
feminine ambition beyond the household and the nursery.

So she had kept it all to herself, till Miss Manisty, shocked as many other
people had begun to be by her fragile looks, had bearded the General, and
carried her off to Rome for the winter. And there she had been forced, as
it were, into this daily contact with Edward Manisty, at what might well
turn out to be the most critical moment of his life; when he was divided
between fierce regrets for the immediate past, and fierce resolves to
recover and assert himself in other ways; when he was taking up again his
earlier function of man of letters in order to vindicate himself as a
politician and a man of action. Strange and challenging personality!--did
she yet know it fully?

Ah! that winter--what a healing in it all!--what a great human experience!
Yet now, as always, when her thoughts turned to the past, she did not allow
them to dwell upon it long. That past lay for her in a golden haze. To
explore it too deeply, or too long,--that she shrank from. All that she
prayed was to press no questions, force no issues. But at least she had
found in it a new reason for living; she meant to live; whereas last year
she had wished to die, and all the world--dear, kind Aunt Pattie first and
foremost--had thought her on the road for death.

But the book?--she bent her brows over it, wrestling with various doubts
and difficulties. Though it was supposed to represent the thoughts and
fancies of an Englishman wandering through modern Italy, it was really
Manisty's Apologia--Manisty's defence of certain acts which had made him
for a time the scandal and offence of the English political party to which
ancestrally he belonged, in whose interests he had entered Parliament and
taken office. He had broken with his party on the ground that it had become
a party of revolution, especially in matters connected with Religion and
Education; and having come abroad to escape for a time from the personal
frictions and agitations which his conduct had brought upon him, he had
thrown himself into a passionate and most hostile study of Italy--Italy,
the new country, made by revolution, fashioned, so far as laws and
government can do it, by the lay modern spirit--as an object-lesson to
England and the world. The book was in reality a party pamphlet, written by
a man whose history and antecedents, independently of his literary ability,
made his work certain of readers and of vogue.

That, however, was not what Mrs. Burgoyne was thinking of.--She was
anxiously debating with herself certain points of detail, points of form.

These fragments of poetical prose which Manisty had interspersed amid a
serious political argument--were they really an adornment of the book, or
a blur upon it? He had a natural tendency towards colour and exuberance
in writing; he loved to be leisurely, and a little sonorous; there was
something old-fashioned and Byronic in his style and taste. His sentences,
perhaps, were short; but his manner was not brief. The elliptical fashion
of the day was not his. He liked to wander through his subject, dreaming,
poetising, discussing at his will. It was like a return to _vetturino_
after the summary haste of the railway. And so far the public had welcomed
this manner of his. His earlier book (the 'Letters from Palestine'), with
its warm, over-laden pages, had found many readers and much fame.

But here--in a strenuous political study, furnished with all the facts
and figures that the student and the debater require--representing,
too, another side of the man, just as vigorous and as real, were these
intrusions of poetry wise or desirable? Were they in place? Was the note of
them quite right? Was it not a little turbid--uncertain?

That prose poem of 'The Priest of Nemi,' for example?

Ah! Nemi!--the mere thought of it sent a thrill of pleasure through her.
That blue lake in its green cup on the edge of the Campagna, with its ruins
and its legends--what golden hours had she and Manisty spent there! It
had caught their fancy from the beginning--the site of the great temple,
the wild strawberry fields, the great cliffs of Nemi and Genzano, the
bright-faced dark-eyed peasants with their classical names--Aristodemo,
Oreste, Evandro.

And that strange legend of the murdered priest--

'The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain'--

--what modern could not find something in that--some stimulus to
fancy--some hint for dreaming?

Yes--it had been very natural--very tempting. But!--

... So she pondered,--a number of acute, critical instincts coming into
play. And presently her thoughts spread and became a vague reverie,
covering a multitude of ideas and images that she and Manisty now had
in common. How strange that she and he should be engaged in this work
together!--this impassioned defence of tradition, of Catholicism and the
Papacy, as the imperishable, indestructible things--'chastened and not
killed--dying, and behold they live'--let the puny sons of modern Italy
rage and struggle as they may. He--one of the most thorough sceptics of
his day, as she had good reason to know--she, a woman who had at one time
ceased to believe because of an intolerable anguish, and was now only
creeping slowly back to faith, to hope, because--because--

Ah!--with a little shiver, she recalled her thought, as a falconer
might his bird, before it struck. Oh! this old, old Europe, with its
complexities, its manifold currents and impulses, every human being
an embodied contradiction--no simplicity, no wholeness anywhere--none
possible!

She opened her eyes languidly, and they rested on Lucy Foster's head and
profile bent over her book. Mrs. Burgoyne's mind filled with a sudden
amused pity for the girl's rawness and ignorance. She seemed the fitting
type of a young crude race with all its lessons to learn; that saw nothing
absurd in its Methodists and Universalists and the rest--confident, as a
child is, in its cries and whims and prejudices. The American girl, fresh
from her wilds, and doubtful whether she would go to see the Pope in St.
Peter's, lest she should have to bow the knee to Antichrist--the image
delighted the mind of the elder woman. She played with it, finding fresh
mock at every turn.

* * * * *

'Eleanor!--now I have rewritten it. Tell me how it runs.'

Lucy Poster looked up. She saw that Mr. Manisty, carrying a sheaf of papers
in his hand, had thrown himself into a chair behind Mrs. Burgoyne. His look
was strenuous and absorbed, his tumbling black hair had fallen forward as
though in a stress of composition; he spoke in a low, imperative voice,
like one accustomed to command the time and the attention of those about
him.

'Read!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, turning her slender neck that she might look
at him and hear. He began to read at once in a deep, tremulous voice, and
as though he were quite unconscious of any other presence in the room than
hers. Miss Foster, who was sitting at a little distance, supposed she ought
not to listen. She was about to close her book and rise, when Miss Manisty
touched her on the arm.

'It disturbs him if we move about!' said the little spinster in a smiling
whisper, her finger on her lip. And suddenly the girl was conscious of a
lightning flash from lifted eyes--a look threatening and peremptory. She
settled herself into her chair again as quietly as possible, and sat with
head bent, a smile she could not repress playing round her lips. It was all
she could do indeed not to laugh, so startling and passionate had been the
monition conveyed in Mr. Manisty's signal. That the great man should take
little notice of his aunt's guest was natural enough. But to be frowned
upon the first evening, as though she were a troublesome child!--she did
not resent it at all, but it tickled her sense of humour. She thought
happily of her next letter to Uncle Ben; how she would describe these
rather strange people.

And at first she hardly listened to what was being read. The voice
displeased her. It was too emphatic--she disliked its tremolo, its deep
bass vibrations. Surely one should read more simply!

Then the first impression passed away altogether. She looked up--her eyes
fastened themselves on the reader--her lips parted--the smile changed.

* * * * *

What the full over-rich voice was calling up before her was a little
morning scene, as Virgil might have described it, passing in the hut of a
Latian peasant farmer, under Tiberius.

It opened with the waking at dawn of the herdsman Caeculus and his little
son, in their round thatched cottage on the ridge of Aricia, beneath the
Alban Mount. It showed the countryman stepping out of his bed into the
darkness, groping for the embers on the hearth, re-lighting his lamp, and
calling first to his boy asleep on his bed of leaves, then to their African
servant, the negro slave-girl with her wide mouth, her tight woolly hair.
One by one the rustic facts emerged, so old, so ever new:--Caeculus grinding
his corn, and singing at his work--the baking of the flat wheaten cakes on
the hot embers--the gathering of herbs from the garden--the kneading them
with a little cheese and oil to make a relish for the day--the harnessing
of the white steers under the thonged yoke--the man going forth to his
ploughing, under the mounting dawn, clad in his goatskin tunic and his
leathern hat,--the boy loosening the goats from their pen beside the hut,
and sleepily driving them past the furrows where his father was at work, to
the misty woods beyond.

With every touch, the earlier world revived, grew plainer in the sun, till
the listener found herself walking with Manisty through paths that cut the
Alban Hills in the days of Rome's first imperial glory, listening to his
tale of the little goatherd, and of Nemi.

* * * * *

'So the boy--Quintus--left the ploughed lands, and climbed a hill above the
sleeping town. And when he reached the summit, he paused and turned him to
the west.

'The Latian plain spreads beneath him in the climbing sun; at its edge is
the sea in a light of pearl; the white fishing-boats sparkle along the
shore. Close at his feet runs a straight road high upon the hill. He can
see the country folk on their laden mules and donkeys journeying along
it, journeying northwards to the city in the plain that the spurs of the
mountain hide from him. His fancy goes with them, along the Appian Way,
trotting with the mules. When will his father take him again to Rome to
see the shops, and the Forum, and the new white temples, and Caesar's great
palace on the hill?

'Then carelessly his eyes pass southward, and there beneath him in its
hollow is the lake--the round blue lake that Diana loves, where are her
temple and her shadowy grove. The morning mists lie wreathed above it; the
just-leafing trees stand close in the great cup; only a few patches of roof
and column reveal the shrine.

'On he moves. His wheaten cake is done. He takes his pipe from his girdle,
touches it, and sings.

'His bare feet as he moves tread down the wet flowers. Bound him throng the
goats; suddenly he throws down his pipe; he runs to a goat heavy with milk;
he presses the teats with his quick hands; the milk flows foaming into the
wooden cup he has placed below; he drinks, his brown curls sweeping the
cup; then he picks up his pipe and walks on proudly before his goats, his
lithe body swaying from side to side as he moves, dancing to the music that
he makes. The notes float up into the morning air; the echo of them runs
round the shadowy hollow of the lake.

'Down trips the boy, parting the dewy branches with his brown shoulders.
Around him the mountain side is golden with the broom; at his feet the
white cistus covers the rock. The shrubs of the scattered wood send out
their scents; and the goats browse upon their shoots.

'But the path sinks gently downward--winding along the basin of the lake.
And now the boy emerges from the wood; he stands upon a knoll to rest.

'Ah! sudden and fierce comes the sun!--and there below him in the rich
hollow it strikes the temple--Diana's temple and her grove. Out flame the
white columns, the bronze roof, the white enclosing walls. Piercingly white
the holy and famous place shines among the olives and the fallows; the sun
burns upon the marble; Phoebus salutes his great sister. And in the waters
of the lake reappear the white columns; the blue waves dance around the
shimmering lines; the mists part above them; they rise from the lake,
lingering awhile upon the woods.

'The boy lays his hands to his eyes and looks eagerly towards the temple.
Nothing. No living creature stirs.

'Often has he been warned by his father not to venture alone within the
grove of the goddess. Twice, indeed, on the great June festivals has he
witnessed the solemn sacrifices, and the crowds of worshippers, and the
torches mirrored in the lake. But without his father, fear has hitherto
stayed his steps far from the temple.

'To-day, however, as the sun mounts, and the fresh breeze breaks from the
sea, his youth and the wildness of it dance within his blood. He and his
goats pass into an olive garden. The red-brown earth has been freshly
turned amid the twisted trunks; the goats scatter, searching for the
patches of daisied grass still left by the plough. Guiltily the boy looks
round him--peers through the olives and their silvery foam of leaves, as
they fall past him down the steep. Then like one of his own kids he lowers
his head and runs; he leaves his flock under the olives; he slips into a
dense ilex-wood, still chill with the morning; he presses towards its edge;
panting he climbs a huge and ancient tree that flings its boughs forward
above the temple wall; he creeps along a branch among the thick small
leaves,--he lifts his head.

'The temple is before him, and the sacred grove. He sees the great
terrace, stretching to the lake; he hears the little waves plashing on its
buttressed wall.

'Close beneath him, towards the rising and the midday sun there stretches
a great niched wall girdling the temple on two sides, each niche a shrine,
and in each shrine a cold white form that waits the sun--Apollo the
Far-Darter, and the spear-bearing Pallas, and among them that golden Caesar,
of whom the country talks, who has given great gifts to the temple--he and
his grandson, the young Gaius.

'The boy strains his eye to see, and as the light strikes into the niche,
flames on the gleaming breastplate, and the uplifted hand, he trembles on
his branch for fear. Hurriedly he turns his look on the dwellings of the
priestesses, where all still sleeps; on the rows of shining pillars that
stand round about the temple; on the close-set trees of the grove that
stands between it and the lake.

'Hark!--a clanging of metal--of great doors upon their hinges. From the
inner temple--from the shrine of the goddess, there comes a man. His head
is bound with the priest's fillet; sharply the sun touches his white
pointed cap; in his hand he carries a sword.

'Between the temple and the grove there is a space of dazzling light. The
man passes into it, turns himself to the east, and raises his hand to
his mouth; drawing his robe over his head, he sinks upon the ground, and
prostrate there, adores the coming god.

'His prayer lasts but an instant. Rising in haste, he stands looking around
him, his sword gathered in his hand. He is a man still young; his stature
is more than the ordinary height of men; his limbs are strong and supple.
His rich dress, moreover, shows him to be both priest and king. But again
the boy among his leaves draws his trembling body close, hiding, like
a lizard, when some passing step has startled it from the sun. For on
this haggard face the gods have written strange and terrible things; the
priest's eyes deep sunk under his shaggy hair dart from side to side in a
horrible unrest; he seems a creature separate from his kind--possessed of
evil--dedicate to fear.

'In the midst of the temple grove stands one vast ilex,--the tree of trees,
sacred to Trivia. The other trees fall back from it in homage; and round it
paces the priest, alone in the morning light.

'But his is no holy meditation. His head is thrown back; his ear listens
for every sound; the bared sword glitters as he moves ...

'There is a rustle among the further trees. Quickly the boy stretches his
brown neck; for at the sound the priest crouches on himself; he throws the
robe from his right arm; and so waits, ready to strike. The light falls on
his pale features, the torment of his brow, the anguish of his drawn lips.
Beside the lapping lake, and under the golden morning, he stands as Terror
in the midst of Peace.

'Silence again:--only the questing birds call from the olive-woods.
Panting, the priest moves onward, racked with sick tremors, prescient of
doom.

'But hark! a cry!--and yet another answering--a dark form bursting from the
grove--a fierce locked struggle under the sacred tree. The boy crawls to
the furthest end of the branch, his eyes starting from his head.

'From the temple enclosure, from the further trees, from the hill around,
a crowd comes running; men and white-robed priestesses, women, children
even--gathering in haste. But they pause afar off. Not a living soul
approaches the place of combat; not a hand gives aid. The boy can see the
faces of the virgins who serve the temple. They are pale, but very still.
Not a sound of pity escapes their white lips; their ambiguous eyes watch
calmly for the issue of the strife.

'And on the further side, at the edge of the grove stand country folk, men
in goatskin tunics and leathern hats like the boy's father. And the little
goatherd, not knowing what he does, calls to them for help in his shrill
voice. But no one heeds; and the priest himself calls no one, entreats no
one.

'Ah! The priest wavers--he falls--his white robes are in the dust. The
bright steel rises--descends:--the last groan speeds to heaven.

* * * * *

'The victor raised himself from the dead, all stained with the blood and
soil of the battle. Quintus gazed upon him astonished. For here was no
rude soldier, nor swollen boxer, but a youth merely--a youth, slender and
beautiful, fair-haired, and of a fair complexion. His loins were girt with
a slave's tunic. Pallid were his young features; his limbs wasted with
hunger and toil; his eyes blood-streaked as those of the deer when the dogs
close upon its tender life.

'And looking down upon the huddled priest, fallen in his blood upon the
dust, he peered long into the dead face, as though he beheld it for the
first time. Shudders ran through him; Quintus listened to hear him weep or
moan. But at the last, he lifted his head, fiercely straightening his limbs
like one who reminds himself of black fate, and things not to be undone.
And turning to the multitude, he made a sign. With shouting and wild cries
they came upon him; they snatched the purple-striped robe from the murdered
priest, and with it they clothed his murderer. They put on him the priest's
fillet, and the priest's cap; they hung garlands upon his neck; and with
rejoicing and obeisance they led him to the sacred temple....

'And for many hours more the boy remained hidden in the tree, held there
by the spell of his terror. He saw the temple ministers take up the body
of the dead, and carelessly drag it from the grove. All day long was there
crowd and festival within the sacred precinct. But when the shadows began
to fall from the ridge of Aricia across the lake; when the new-made priest
had offered on Trivia's altar a white steer, nourished on the Alban grass;
when he had fed the fire of Vesta; and poured offerings to Virbius the
immortal, whom in ancient days great Diana had snatched from the gods'
wrath, and hidden here, safe within the Arician wood,--when these were
done, the crowd departed and the Grove-King came forth alone from the
temple.

'The boy watched what he would do. In his hand he carried the sword, which
at the sunrise he had taken from the dead. And he came to the sacred tree
that was in the middle of the grove, and he too began to pace about it,
glancing from side to side, as that other had done before him. And once
when he was near the place where the caked blood still lay upon the ground,
the sword fell clashing from his hand, and he flung his two arms to heaven
with a hoarse and piercing cry--the cry of him who accuses and arraigns the
gods.

'And the boy, shivering, slipped from the tree, with that cry in his ear,
and hastily sought for his goats. And when he had found them he drove them
home, not staying even to quench his thirst from their swollen udders. And
in the shepherd's hut he found his father Caeculus; and sinking down beside
him with tears and sobs he told his tale.

'And Caeculus pondered long. And without chiding, he laid his hand upon the
boy's head and bade him be comforted. "For," said he, as though he spake
with himself--"such is the will of the goddess. And from the furthest
times it has happened thus, before the Roman fathers journeyed from the
Alban Mount and made them dwellings on the seven hills--before Romulus
gave laws,--or any white-robed priest had climbed the Capitol. From blood
springs up the sacred office; and to blood it goes! No natural death must
waste the priest of Trivia's tree. The earth is hungry for the blood in its
strength--nor shall it be withheld! Thus only do the trees bear, and the
fields bring forth."

'Astonished, the boy looked at his father, and saw upon his face, as he
turned it upon the ploughed lands and the vineyards, a secret and a savage
joy. And the little goatherd's mind was filled with terror--nor would his
father tell him further what the mystery meant. But when he went to his bed
of dried leaves at night, and the moon rose upon the lake, and the great
woods murmured in the hollow far beneath him, he tossed restlessly from
side to side, thinking of the new priest who kept watch there--of his young
limbs and miserable eyes--of that voice which he had flung to heaven. And
the child tried to believe that he might yet escape.--But already in his
dreams he saw the grove part once more and the slayer leap forth. He saw
the watching crowd--and their fierce, steady eyes, waiting thirstily for
the spilt blood. And it was as though a mighty hand crushed the boy's
heart, and for the first time he shrank from the gods, and from his
father,--so that the joy of his youth was darkened within him.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33